RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With con­cerns over to­day’s ref­er­en­dum and its po­ten­tial im­pact on Venezuela’s sta­bil­i­ty, Venezue­lans re­sid­ing in Trinidad are dili­gent­ly ship­ping as many goods as they can back to their fam­i­lies in prepa­ra­tion for Christ­mas.

Co-or­di­na­tor of the La Ro­main Mi­grant Sup­port Group Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine told Guardian Me­dia that most Venezue­lans are dis­in­ter­est­ed in vot­ing in to­day’s ref­er­en­dum which deals with Venezuela’s claim on the Es­se­qui­bo, a 160,000 square kilo­me­tre ter­ri­to­ry.

Guyana con­sti­tutes more than two-thirds of the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry. The In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice on Fri­day or­dered Venezuela not to take any ac­tion to al­ter Guyana’s con­trol over the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry. How­ev­er, Venezue­lans are still head­ing to the polls to­day to vote in the ref­er­en­dum on the is­sue.

Ram­nar­ine said the Venezue­lans re­sid­ing in Trinidad have been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the de­vel­op­ments and have ex­pressed wor­ry that any po­ten­tial move to claim the land will fur­ther set Venezuela back.

“They un­der­stand Venezuela’s in­sta­bil­i­ty, and this ref­er­en­dum on­ly adds to it. Those in Venezuela are be­ing pres­sured and co­erced to gar­ner sup­port for the ref­er­en­dum, but those in Trinidad are dis­in­ter­est­ed in vot­ing,” Ram­nar­ine added.

She men­tioned how Venezue­lans are tak­ing on ex­tra jobs like land­scap­ing, clean­ing hous­es, paint­ing, and con­struc­tion to sup­ple­ment their in­comes.

“Es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing Christ­mas, peo­ple are tak­ing on mul­ti­ple jobs to send things back home. This time of year holds great sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty for them as they miss their fam­i­lies,” she said.

Ram­nar­ine said there was some re­lief stem­ming from re­cent com­ments by Venezue­lan Par­lia­ment mem­ber Ja­cobo Tor­res who as­sured last week that Venezuela will main­tain peace with neigh­bour­ing Guyana de­spite the on­go­ing dis­pute.

Speak­ing dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion held by the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege, Tor­res warned the glob­al pub­lic not to al­low the Unit­ed States (US) to pro­voke war in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can re­gion. He de­clared that the US on­ly cared about the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry be­cause sub­stan­tial oil re­serves were found there, as he claimed US re­serves were dwin­dling.

In the midst of this, Venezue­lan na­tion­al Juan Bar­illes ex­pressed con­cern for his fam­i­ly in Venezuela. De­spite the dif­fi­cul­ties in Trinidad, he ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the jobs he se­cured lead­ing up to Christ­mas.

The ref­er­en­dum pos­es five ques­tions to Venezue­lan vot­ers.

This in­cludes whether or not to re­ject the 1899 de­ci­sion, whether Cara­cas should re­ject ICJ ju­ris­dic­tion over the dis­pute, and whether or not to grant Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship to the peo­ple–cur­rent­ly Guyanese–of a new “Guyana Es­e­qui­ba State”.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has been vo­cif­er­ous­ly en­cour­ag­ing vot­ers to ap­prove the ref­er­en­dum, in what po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts said was a test of gov­ern­ment sup­port be­fore the planned 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.